Working away...

Not much to report this week in the world of Proxenus.  Still at it:

Pretty soon, there's going to be a preview of sorts; a chance for people to see how things work and how the final product will look and feel.  Also, the website should be up and running by next week.  In the meantime, check out the Proxenus page here on the blog (there's a big Proxenus button to your right ->).  There are plenty of in-game screen shots available and more...

A little closer to cohesion...

This week, I wanted to show a bit of progress on the new project.  To that end, here's how the art works:

This project features a wide variety of locations with multiple angles in each, so I've decided to go with 3d rendering for the locations and for some of the characters...

This line version provides reference for the art, and...

This version provides the basic textures for the background.  

Next comes the art for characters in the scene...

Then, we move on to colors, more textures, and the final composites and adjustments; giving us the final image...

This is an interactive narrative where the reader gets to choose which character to begin the story with.  We're looking at the opening screen where that choice happens.  After the initial illustration is done, I'll be adding dialogue boxes and user interface.  It should (or could) look something like this:

And there you have it.  Everything is still very much work-in-progress, but I feel like I've made some big steps this week.  More updates soon...

Saturday at Worldcon, a fine day for another 1-hour illustration...

A bit of fantasy this time around.  Enjoy...

Another day of Worldcon, another 1-hour sci-fi illustration

We're on day 3 of Sasquan here in Spokane.  So... another hour of sci-fi illustration INSANITY (compressed into about 4 minutes).  YOU ARE COMMANDED TO ENJOY.

Hanging at Sasquan (Worldcon in Spokane, WA) and Making Art

This week I've been hanging out at Sasquan (that's what they're calling Worldcon here in Spokane).  I got inspired, as I often do at cons, to create some art.  Above is a piece that I created in one hour; no save until the end, non-stop illustration madness.  This was created primarily because I'm fascinated by the artistic process and rather fond of time-lapse videos depicting such.  This piece is called "Devil in the Stars".  Sasquan will be a raging nerd-fest until Sunday, so I plan to squeeze out a few more of these for your entertainment.  Let me know what you think...

Breaking Ground on a New Project...

Welcome to my art blog  :)  

Today, I started putting together the first image for an upcoming venture into something I'm calling "Illustrated Interactive Fiction".  It's a bit like a visual novel, a bit like an interactive comic, a bit like an adventure game, and a lot like this stuff here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ih0Y6fW9J4  At least, this type of game is what inspired the new venture.  The review of this game was created by AdventureReviews.  If you like gaming and want to learn a lot of interesting things about how narrative games are designed and about their history, I highly recommend looking through the reviews on his Youtube channel.

This is a narrative project that will be presented as a series of sequential images with music and ambient animation.  Players (readers?) will be able to select a character at the beginning of the narrative and follow the story from that character's point of view.  There will be a few points where players can change characters during the narrative and a number of contextual situations that players will need to puzzle through to continue with the narrative.  

It's taken me some time to figure out an art style/technique that I can quickly reproduce for a large number of high-quality images, but I think I've got it.  The art is going to be a multi-media affair; a combination of traditional, 3d, and photoshop.  Here's an early art test:

Not necessarily the final, final, final version of anything, but pretty close to what the final art will look like.  So far, the most challenging thing has been getting the different mediums to jive with one another with a process that I can rapidly reproduce.  My goal is to give this story its due without compromising the level of artist quality and amount of images that I think are necessary for telling the story.

Stay tuned for a step-by-step of the artistic process, a bit about the development process and history, and a whole lot more...